In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University began a sit-in at the Woolworth's department store, at a lunch counter that, like many in the South, would not serve African-American customers except for take-out orders. After their classes, the four young men (Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Ezell Blair, Jr.) entered Woolworth's, made some purchases, and at 4:30, took seats at the counter and politely placed orders for desserts and coffee. When the waitress told them they couldn't be served, they stayed until closing time. The next morning, at least 20 students came to Woolworth's and began taking up seats as they became available. By Wednesday, the sit-ins were national news, and the next week, spread to other cities. By summer, most chain stores ended their whites-only policy.

At an exhibition at the Logan Billiard Academy in Brooklyn, Mike Eufemia set a record that has remained for half a century, for the longest "run", sinking 625 consecutive billiard balls without a miss.[2]

Before a session of the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made the "Wind of Change" speech, telling the all-white assembly that "The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it." [3]

The Senate of France voted 226–39 to allow President Charles De Gaulle to rule by decree in order to dismantle the power of French settlers in Algeria. The National Assembly had approved the measure the day before, 441–75. "We almost saw a collapse of the state last week", Prime Minister Michel Debre told the Senators, in urging passage of the measure.[4]

U.S. President Eisenhower announced at a news conference that the United States should be able to make nuclear weapons available to its allies. Eisenhower urged that the Atomic Energy Act be amended in order to permit the U.S. to transfer weapons to the arsenals of other nations.[5]

After a brief interview, France's President De Gaulle fired Jacques Soustelle from the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Algeria. Soustelle, the highest ranking French government official in the overseas Department, was the first of the European Algerians to be dismissed as part of De Gaulle's rule by decree.[6]

All 59 persons on board a Lloyd Aéreo Bolviano DC-4 were killed when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Cochabamba, Bolivia.[9]

Amon Ndoffou II, King of Sanwi, one of the leaders of the Anyi people of Côte d'Ivoire (Côte d'Ivoire), declared an independent kingdom, six months before the colony was scheduled to become independent from France. Ivorian troops arrested the King and his Prime Minister, Ehoumou Bile, and ended the secession attempt without bloodshed.[10]

Twenty-five people were killed and 50 more injured in a railroad derailment near Sewell, Chile. The train was transporting employees of the Braden Copper Mining Company, and their families, on a Sunday outing.[14]

Laurence Slattery and Lesley Wasley, both volunteers, permitted a team of Australian doctors at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney to administer curare to stop their breathing, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of various forms of artificial respiration. Among the findings were that a drowning victim's head should be placed upright, rather than to the side, to aid breathing.[15]

Adolph Coors III, chairman of the Coors Brewing Company, disappeared shortly after leaving his house near Morrison, Colorado, for a 9:00 am meeting with brewery executives at Golden. His truck was found later that morning, and his glasses were nearby.[18] A demand for $500,000 was found the next day, but the kidnapper did not follow up. Coors's body was found on September 12. Joseph Corbett, Jr. was later convicted of the kidnapping and murder.[19] Corbett was paroled in 1978 and died in 2009.

The bodies of five crewmembers of the B-24 LiberatorLady Be Good were located by exploration worker James Backhaus, in the Libyan desert, 16 years after the airplane had vanished on April 4, 1943, during the Second World War. The men had walked 85 miles in hopes of finding help, before running out of water.[21]

Lt.Gen. Arthur G. Trudeau, Chief of Research for the United States Army, inadvertently revealed classified information during a press conference, when he disclosed that an atomic explosion could neutralize a hydrogen bomb through the principle of neutron flux. General Trudeau said that it would be better to have "a small explosion a hundred miles over Hartford, Connecticut, than a large explosion in New York City." [23]

Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan of the Soviet Union and Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro signed an agreement that guaranteed the Castro government a $100,000,000 line of credit until 1972, and provided that the Soviets would buy one million tons of Cuban sugar per year for five years.[27]

Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan was confirmed as its President through a limited referendum that he had called as a test of his theory of "basic democracy". The 80,000 village councilmen who had been elected locally were called upon to vote "yes" or "no" on Ayub's continuance in office, and 75,283 of them voted in the affirmative.[28]

The United Kingdom signed a new treaty of protection with the Maldives, which had been a British protectorate since 1887. The Indian Ocean island group was granted independence in 1965.[29]

War threatened to break out between Israel and the Egypt (at that time partners with Syria in the United Arab Republic), after the UAR's President Nasser received inaccurate information that Israeli troops were massing at Israel's border with Syria. Nasser then sent a major portion of the Egyptian army to Israel's border with Egypt, and Israel then began Operation Rottem. The two sides halted war preparations after discovering the misunderstanding, and both sides stood down on March 1.[30]

Died:Cho Pyong-ok, 65, the leading opposition candidate in South Korea's upcoming presidential election, died while receiving medical treatment in the United States. With no opponent, President Syngman Rhee was re-elected for a fourth term as South Korea's president.[31]

The nuclear submarine USS Triton submerged upon departure from New London, Connecticut, and, with 184 people on board, began an underwater trip around the world that ended 83 days later on May 10. The Triton was forced to broach its sail above the surface on March 5 in order to transfer a seriously ill sailor to another ship, then spent the rest of the circumnavigation entirely undersea.[32]

Pilot Charles Hayes and two passengers were killed when their twin engine plane crashed near the St. Gertrude School in the Indian Hill, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. Hayes was credited posthumously with applying a final thrust to the engines to avoid crashing into the school.[35]

The Chinese space program began its first step "in a long march toward outer space", with the launch of the liquid-propelled T-7 rocket. The missile, made entirely within the People's Republic, only reached an altitude of five miles, but was a successful sub-orbital flight. China first put a satellite into space in 1970, and put a man into orbit in 2003.[36]

Physician Barbara Moulton resigned in protest from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, writing a letter to Commissioner George P. Larrick that included the accusation that the FDA had "failed utterly in its solemn task of enforcing those sections of the law dealing with the safety and misbranding of drugs" [37]

Following a month-long conference in Brussels, Belgium, the date of June 30 was set for granting independence to its African colony of the Belgian Congo. Under an agreement between the Belgian government and Congolese leaders, elections would be held on May 16 for provincial legislatures and a 137 member national Chamber of Representatives, and the provinces would then select a Senate.[11]

In Richard Condon's 1974 bestselling mystery, Winter Kills, February 22, 1960, is the date of the assassination of fictional U.S. President "Tim Kegan" in a Philadelphia motorcade, in a novel based loosely upon John F. Kennedy's 1963 murder.

Demolition began at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, home of baseball's Dodgers until their move to Los Angeles in 1958. A crowd of 200 fans and former Brooklyn players watched as Lucy Monroe sang the National Anthem at Ebbets for the last time, and a band played Auld Lang Syne. The wrecking ball, painted white and painted to resemble a giant baseball, began its work with the destruction of the visitors' dugout.[41]

Argentina called off its search for an "unidentified submerged object" in Golfo Nuevo. Since January 30, when a sonar picked up evidence of a trapped foreign submarine, the Argentine Navy had been searching the gulf. At one point, it appeared that there were two subs below the surface, but after more than three weeks, the Buenos Aires government concluded that if there had been a foreign sub, it had escaped.[44]

Four people were killed and five others injured by a pipeline worker turned sniper. Dan Raymond, who lived near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, shot two county workers who were spreading cinders, then fired from his home at other vehicles until police killed him nine hours later.[45]

Born:Alex Masterley, fictional protagonist of the British comic strip Alex.

After having fled to Syria, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Iraq, for his role in conspiring to kill Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim.[46] Saddam returned to Iraq after Qassim's assassination in 1963, and did not face a death sentence again until his execution on December 30, 2006.

In Rio de Janeiro, a U.S. Navy R6D collided with a Brazilian Real Aéreas airliner, killing 61 people on both airplanes. There were only 3 survivors, all on the American plane, which had been transporting a U.S. Navy band to perform during President Eisenhower's visit to Brazil.[48]

1960 Winter Olympics: Hjallis Andersen's world record for the men's 10,000 meter speed skating event (16:32.6) had stood since 1952, and was bested by five different skaters on the same day. Kjell Bäckman of Sweden set a new world's record of 16:14.2. Minutes later, Knut Johannesen of Norway broke Bäckman's record with a time of 15:46.6, more than 45 seconds faster than the 1952 mark. A few minutes after that, Viktor Kosichikin of the USSR came within 2.7 seconds of beating Johannesen, winning the silver medal.[51]

1960 Winter Olympics: A tip from a Soviet player helped the United States ice hockey team win the gold medal. Exhausted from a 3–2 victory over the Soviet Union's team the day before, the Americans were losing to Czechoslovakia, 4–3, with one period left. Nikolai Sologubov suggested whiffs of bottled oxygen for quick energy, and the U.S. responded with six goals, winning 9–4.[52]

At 11:47 p.m., the city of Agadir in Morocco was shaken for 15 seconds by an earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale, followed by another tremor an hour later. At least 12,000 people were killed in the collapse of unreinforced stone buildings.[53]

The Family Circus made its debut. Initially syndicated by the Des Moines Register and Tribune, the comic panel was created by Bil Keane, whose TV-themed Channel Chuckles was already a newspaper feature.[54] On the first day's strip, the three children had placed a sled on top of their sleeping father, and "Billy"'s line was "Guess what it's doing out." [55]

St. Louis radio station KMOX revolutionized radio with the debut of a live call-in program called At Your Service.